Qualcomm Shares Soar After Reporting Better-than-expected Fiscal Q4 Earnings

Shares of semiconductor maker Qualcomm were up over 6 percent in extended trading on Wednesday after the company released its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings. The earnings reported by the American multinational company beat the expectations of analysts amid the challenges it is facing as a result if the global chip shortage.

The company reported earnings per share of $2.55, adjusted, surpassing the expectation of $2.26 set by analysts. The earnings per share reported was up 76 percent YoY. Driven by a 56 percent YoY boosts in smartphone chip sales, Qualcomm’s revenue beat Wall Street’s expectations. Revenue of $9.3 billion, adjusted, was reported by the company. This is up 43 percent YoY and beats analysts’ estimates of $8.86 billion.

The company’s chip business, QCT, recorded a revenue of $7.7 billion, up 56 percent YoY. The company says the strong demand for chips used in making smartphones and handsets pushed this growth. This growth, however, comes amid the challenges with the supply of the semiconductors required to manufacture computers and many other devices. The revenue reported by the semiconductor maker, therefore, shows that the company has been able to thrive irrespective of the challenges that have hurt other chipmakers and tech companies such as Apple, Intel, AMD, etc.

Qualcomm saw its IoT business grow 66 percent to $1.5 billion. This wing of its business manufactures low-power chips required to connect other devices to the internet. This segment also falls under its chip business – QCT. RF front-end chips designed to power 5G devices grew 45 percent to $1.24 billion.

The company’s handset business, which is the category with the second-strongest growth in the quarter ending December recorded $4.69 billion in sales. The company’s goal is to provide chips for at least 550 million 5G smartphones in 2022.

The company’s automotive business, which remains its smallest product category for chips, grew 44 percent to $270 million. The company had also announced several partnerships with automakers during the quarter, so the figure should have been greater.

Qualcomm announced that it repurchased $1.54 billion of its own shares during the quarter and paid dividends worth $768 million. The company’s profitable technology licensing division, called QTL, recorded $1.55 billion in sales, up 3 percent YoY.

Qualcomm also mentioned an expectation of between $10 billion and $10.8 billion in sales in the current quarter, higher than the $9.68 billion expected by analysts.